The following background information may present examples of specific aspects of the prior art (e.g., without limitation, approaches, facts, or common wisdom) that, while expected to be helpful to further educate the reader as to additional aspects of the prior art, is not to be construed as limiting the present invention, or any embodiments thereof, to anything stated or implied therein or inferred thereupon.
Typically, wire racks and shelves consists of wire mesh supported by metal supports and is intended to be load-bearing. The mesh is usually welded to the supports, but may be attached in other ways as well. In commercial and industrial applications, the wire mesh usually has a minimum wire gauge of 0.105 inches when round wire is used. The most common shelf size is 42 inches deep by 46 inches wide, while two such shelves placed side-by-side can usually be combined to allow for a single shelf of 8 feet wide.
Generally, supermarkets and similar merchandising establishments display and sell a great deal of merchandise contained in cans such as soups, soft drinks or other products. In such large volume establishments it is necessary from time to time to maintain a proper supply of cans on the shelves and at the same time to display them with maximum advantage both for convenience so that the customer can find a desired canned product, as well as to promote any particular canned items.
Often, cans stacked on end on top of each other on ordinary rigid supermarket shelves do not readily dispense from the shelf, sometimes fall when the customer attempts to remove them, and requires some amount of care in stacking or tumbling will result. Due to shelf space concerns in supermarkets, the can racks are not large enough to accommodate all the cans available for display and sale.
Other proposals have involved racks for displaying and dispensing canned items. The problem with these racks is that they have limited space and surface area. Even though the above cited racks devices meets some of the needs of the market, a can rack assembly that provides a plurality of modular racks that serve to facilitate both the loading of cans and the presentation of the cans for removal by a consumer, while also enabling multiple modular racks to be configured into multiple stacked arrangements through the use of side panels comprising flat bars having convex and concave humps, and further brackets that help fasten the flat bars together is still desired.